This Week in Fintech (8/21)

Hello Fintech Friends,

Our first Signals of Q2 is now out, breaking down the record-breaking fintech venture capital activity over the past quarter. Our next one on M&A activity will be arriving shortly. 👀

Also, big props to Wiza, Folayemi, and Tori for lining up a great list of sponsors and a great venue for our Lagos meetup on October 28th. This community is epic.

Please find another week of fintech financings and exits below.

Editor’s Note: If you’re an early-stage startup founder raising equity or debt, I may be able to help - reach out to nik@thisweekinfintech.com.

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💸 Venture Financing

DriveWealth, an embedded investing infrastructure provider, raised $450 million at a $2.85 billion valuation.
Sightline Payments, an electronic payments company for the gaming industry, raised $244 million.
Divvy Homes, a startup that helps consumers save for and buy homes, raised a $200 million Series D.
Reali, an Israeli platform for real estate financing, raised $250 million.
MobileCoin, a private stablecoin mobile payments network, raised a $66 million Series B.
CloudPay, an employee payments platform, raised $58 million.
Branch, an employee payroll provider, raised a $48 million Series B.
One, a neobank for middle-class consumers, raised a $40 million Series B.
Smallcase, an Indian wealth management startup, raised $40 million in Series C funding.
jaris, a full-stack embedded lending solution, raised a $31 million Series B.
Klub, an India and Singapore-based revenue-based financing platform, raised $20 million.
Pngme, an African financial data infrastructure platform, raised $15 million.
Jenfi, a Singaporean revenue-based financing platform, raised a $6.3 million Series A.
Yield Guild Games, which provides gamers a decentralized infrastructure for monetizing their play, raised $4.6 million.
Ondo Finance, a defi protocol for loan origination, raised a $4 million seed round.
Moneyworld, a money management gaming app, raised a $2 million seed.
PayEngine, a payment facilitation platform for vertical SaaS, raised a $1.6 million seed.
Showlove, a Nigerian fintech platform for social gifting, closed a $300,000 pre-seed.
Plaid, the US open banking giant, raised additional Series D capital from JP Morgan and AmEx Ventures.
OneBanks, the UK maker of a pop-up kiosk to replace bank branches, raised funding from Japanese tech group Glory.

💵 Debt Financing

Employee payroll provider Branch raised $500 million in debt alongside its Series B.

💰 Venture Funds

Fintech Collective, a fintech specialist early-stage investor based out of New York, raised $250 million - $200 million to focus on fintech investments and $50 million to focus on decentralized finance investments.

☯️ Exits

💻 IPOs

Klarna, which was last valued at $45.6 billion, said that a public listing in 2022 is likely but not imminent.

📈 SPACs

Aspiration, a socially conscious neobank, landed a $2.3 billion deal to go public through the InterPrivate III Financial Partners SPAC.
WinVest Acquisition, a financial services SPAC, filed for a $100 million IPO.

🤝 M&A - Fintech

Even Techcrunch is getting in on the fintech M&A coverage this week, in Why fintechs are buying up legacy financial services companies.

Startup banking and card provider Brex acquired Weav, a universal API for e-commerce platforms, for $50 million.
Deko, a point of sale vendor and retail finance platform, acquired tech services provider Imegamedia.
UK financial data provider FE fundinfo bought out its Danish counterpart FundConnect.
Azentio Software, a Singaporean software development shop, acquired the core banking assets of Path Solutions for Islamic finance.
US exchange provider CME Group (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) denied rumors that it is in the market to acquire rival Cboe Global Markets.

🏦 M&A - Bank

HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, made its largest acquisition since 2012, buying up insurer AXA’s Singapore assets for $575 million.

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